Evelyn’s disclaimer. I am not a certified pest control person; I am not recommending any particular product. What you have here is a short compilation of some useful information and websites where you can learn even more.
January and February is winter spray time for your fruit trees and your citrus trees.
It is also the time for your winter pruning of stone fruit trees like peaches and apricots.
Hopefully you pruned your trees during the summer right after your fruit was finished. Click here to find out why. The Davewilson.com web site has lots of good ionformation.
This is also a handy link:.http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/
You can wander around these sites for ages and learn ever so much.
http://davewilson.com/homegrown/BOC_explained.html
There are so many good things on the Davewilson web site.
Below you will find some other links to some useful web sites where you can download lots of help.
Be sure to download the calendar link below. This will give you quick and easy information that you can take right out into the garden for easy reference.
http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/calendar.pdf for stone fruits and nuts. Do this one for sure.
http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/cal_citrus.pdf Download this one for citrus care through the year.
Quick tips for when you are out of time.
General pruning principles. I put in some drawings just to make you feel more secure.
First: remove all dead, dying and diseased wood.
Second: remove all branches and limbs that grow toward the center of the tree. This promotes aeration and light penetration to the fruiting wood.
Third: Remove thin branches and limbs that cross or touch, so that abrasions do not develop.
Finally: remove any suckers (suckers are the growth that comes from close to the soil and below the bud or graft)
Clean, Clean Clean. Strip off if necessary every single leaf off of the trees (hopefuly the leaves the cold winter chill will have done this for you), the mummified fruit, the leaves on the ground. get rid of all of it.
Follow the instructions on your UC home orchard calendar and your Dave wilson link on pruning.
General dormant spraying principals.
The diseases and insects are hiding now and are waiting to attack. in the spring and summer.
The spraying that you do now will avert a lot of problems in the summer.
Note: when you see the symptoms in spring and summer it is too late to spray. The spraying must be done in the dormant season to be really affective. That is in the winter months of January and February when the tree has lost its leaves and is in what we call the 'dormant' stage.
Spray Citrus with either an all season oil spray or the vegol oil spray. Vegol is made from Canola oil.
If you have any of the stone fruits you need to do both an Oil spray and a copper spray.
There are several all season oil sprays available.
With the right sprayer you can mix the two and make it in one application.It is not practical to do this with a hose end sprayer.
The best choice is usually to spray with a fixed copper spray.Because you can use this on all your fruit trees. The more actual copper in the spray the more effective it will be. Check the labels. More info at the bottom of this page.
We have the following products for you to choose from. The more actual fixed copper the more the spray material will cost.
Table 1. Examples of copper products available to homeowners and percent copper, percent metallic copper equivalent, and label rates. |
|||
Product name |
Active Ingredient (a.i.) and formulation |
Metallic Copper Equivalent (MCE) |
Label rates |
Bonide Copper s |
|
||
Monterey Liqui-Cop |
Copper ammonium complex |
8% MCE |
3–4 Tbsp per 1 gallon |
Lilly Miller Microcop Fungicide |
90 % tribasic copper sulfate |
50% MCE |
2–1/3 Tbsp per 1 gallon |
Often sold with spreader/sticker Sta-Stuk “M” |
Potassium resinate and potassium oleate |
|
|
Most copper is: Lilly Miller Micro cop We have about 6 of these left and they are no longer available.
Lime/Sulfur is another old traditional dormant spray. Lime/Sulfur has been taken away but we can still sell what we have on hand. Don't forget you cannot use a sulfur spray on Apricots
Sulfur is a must for most grapes and works well in other applications too. it can also be mixed with water for a spray.
Bonide |
Bonide Sulfur Dust
Sulfur 90% A specially prepared micronic sulfur suitable for use as a dust or spray. The fine particle size gives better coverage, adhesion and disease control. This product controls a large number of diseases on fruits, vegetables and various ornamentals. Approved for organic gardening. Now labeled for chiggers.
|
All of these fungal infections are spread through microscopic fungal spores the over winter on the foliage, old fruit mummies and the cracks and crevices of the trees. Besides those 'nasites' your tree might be hiding aphid and mite eggs, San Jose brown Scale and other Scales too.
If you are spraying Citrus trees the Vegol or other dormant oil spray will help to smother mealybugs, Scales and Scale crawlers, Whiteflies and other pests. The oil spray does not hurt the beneficial insects that are there and will allow them to help you keep your trees healthy.
Buy a handy tube of Tangle foot. The main spreaders of insects are the Ants. Tangle foot applied around the trunk will help to stop the ants from getting into your Citrus trees. When you are pruning make very sure that none of he citrus branches touch anything else . The ants will find that a convenient Freeway to your Citrus.
We have Max Force for ant control that is almost totaly non-toxic.
, Try to time your spray to a time when we will not have rain for at least 3 or 4 days.
How do the different types of sprays work? The short non professional answer is:
.Soap sprays work by drying out the outside covering of the pest.
Oil sprays work by smothering the pests. It cuts off their oxygen and they die.
A fungicide works by killing the microscopic spores. the newer organic fungicides work differently by incepting the growth cycle.
A true chemical pesticide actually poisons the insect.
Some sprays are multipurpose sprays being effective (we hope) against multiple pests. Look at the label to see what that product is registered to kill. A fungicide will not kill an aphid or a whitefly. A miticide will not do anything against powdery mildew or peach leaf curl.
Bacillus Hurriedness or Bt kills caterpillars by forming a toxin in the caterpillars gut. It does nothing at all for an aphid. Know what the problem is and use the best material that you can. follow the directions, don't spay plants that don't need it. When you spray spray thoroughly, a light spray just make them feel a little sick and then the next generation can more quickly become immune to that ingredient.
Sad fact. The plant insect and disease are smarter than you, there are more of them and he ants are on their side.
Hee are some pictures that show you some of the more common fungal diseases.
Mummfied Fruit
Peach Leaf Curl
Nectarine Scab
Brown Rot
Shot Hole Blight
Shot Hole Blight on branches From Evelyn's Nectarine that every year has Brown Rot and the fruit thenis not worth even picking.
Here is the report on the results of last years spraying. The nectarines were certainly much better. Almost no brown rot. I did have some hard scabbing on the bottom. Was this from earlier Brown rot spores or from something else. I should have taken some fruit down to our home ag advisor like I tell all of you to do. But I was just too busy .I am pretty sure it was scab. The nectarines were certainly much better. I used the highest and best quality of copper spray. Here are some pictures of the different fungal diseases that can attack your fruit trees. All these need to be sprayed in winter.